Directors: The All Time Greats

by Neil Sinyard

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0831739991
• ISBN13: 9780831739997
• Release Date: January 1985
• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Weight: 1.67 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The Ultimate Inspiration

My father bought this book over a decade ago. Recently I was fortunate enough to be interested in going through it from beginning to end. I think this is the most unprejudiced book ever to be published on world cinema.Sinyard has categorized the greatest directors in the world in four classes: The Pioneers, Stylists & Storytellers, Artists & Moralists, and New Voices.He begins the journey from the birth of cinema, rather from the fathers of cinema. The silent film era with Lang, Chaplin, Eisenstein, Griffith, Keaton etc.The second section features responsible men who took the meaning of cinema to soaring heights, yet conforming to the norms of the society then.Under the third section he puts those geniuses who revolutionized films during 50s, 60s and 70s. Bergman, Fellini, Godard, Kurosawa, Lean, Ray etc.The final section features the avant-garde. Herzog, Kubrick, Lester, Polanski and summing it up with Spielberg.The entire book has a huge collection of pictures. The cover features Hitchcock, Allen, Spielberg, and Coppola. Inside, there's a huge picture of David Lean calling the shots.The way Sinyard shows Spielberg, it feels to me that he projects him as the torchbearer of world cinema, although he hasn't mentioned anything of that sort anywhere.All in all, I can only say one thing: Anyone who aspires to be a director SHOULD go through this book. Don't read it. Just go through it. Read the names and see the pictures. By the time you reach the last page, you will feel vacuum inside you.